First Look: Sony shoots for enthusiasts with HX50V travel zoom

First Look: Sony shoots for enthusiasts with HX50V travel zoom

1:52 /
June 6, 2013

While many have traded in their point-and-shoots for smartphones, this 30x zoom (big) pocket camera gives you plenty of reasons to still carry one.

Hey there, I'm Josh Goldman and this is the smallest, lightest compact camera with a 30x zoom.
It's the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX50V.
While I wouldn't go so far as to say it's easily pocketable, considering other 30x zoom cameras look more like SLRs, I'm not complaining.
The lens goes from a wide 24 mm to 720 mm,
which isn't always the easiest to keep steady, but Sony's image stabilization does well; however, the lens's aperture ranges from f/3.5 to f/6.3, meaning you'll need a fair amount of light when using the zoom lens to avoid using high ISO settings.
The camera is more than its lens, though, as Sony includes a lot of shooting options including full manual and semi-manual modes, 1080p movie capture at 60 frames per second,
and a lot of effects and filters and other things to experiment with.
That includes a new exposure compensation dial, and should you want to spend more money, a multi-interface shoe that can take an add-on flash or an electronic viewfinder, though that will run as much as the camera.
Photo quality and shooting performance are both pretty solid, though depending on the mode you're using, some photos take longer to process than others.
Adding
its built-in GPS and Wi-Fi that you can use to send photos and videos to computers, smartphones, or tablets or actually use to control the camera and you've got an excellent travel zoom for just about any level photographer.
I'm Josh Goldman and that's the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX50V.